Member-only story
My therapist does the first few sessions differently to me.
There’s nothing like going back into therapy to trigger an automatic evaluation process of your own ways of working.
I haven’t changed my assessment process much since day one: short (15 minutes) phone call to assess compatibility, find out presenting issues, answer any questions the prospective client has, then have a full 50 minute session where I have a form I’ve created that covers their life history. I will go through this mostly in order to get a broad overview of what might have informed how they came to be who they are today. This form includes questions about relationships past and present, school, work, hobbies, coping behaviours (such as drinking or eating) etc.
My therapist doesn’t do that.
Scrappy notebook
We had a twenty minute Zoom call when I first got to the top of their waiting list. They asked a bit about what I was looking for from therapy which meant I spoke a bit about relationship challenges, the stuff that had happened recently that showed me I had specific things to work on, and I asked them about their experience of autism.
This call went well so we arranged our first in-person session.
My therapist had an A4 notebook on their lap for the first two sessions which they made a few notes in.
They asked me about relationships — friendships specifically, and my last intimate relationship. I finished that first assessment session having not spoken about family at all.
The second assessment session I went in intending to talk about my family background and the reasons I had chosen to go on their waiting list because that felt the most important information for them to have from the start.
But they asked me about sexuality and romantic relationships. It was only the last fifteen minutes that I got to talk about my family.
Emerging sexuality
Like many middle-aged, late diagnosed neurodivergent women, I’ve had some questions in recent years about what I’ve been doing sexually and romantically, and whether that’s actually what I want or if it’s what I learned it’s…
